Zia Yusuf’s exit from Reform UK highlights party divisions

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Former banker Zia Yusuf emerged on the British political scene last summer as the man Nigel Farage tasked with turning his upstart Reform UK party into a professional electoral machine capable of winning real power.

Since his appointment as Reform’s chair, which followed a £200,000 donation, Yusuf has sought to direct the party with an iron grip, firing staff and campaigners he saw as incompetent or insufficiently committed.

But less than a year later, Yusuf himself has fallen victim to the internal tensions that have beset the rightwing populist party even as it leads national opinion polls and unsettles the mainstream British political establishment.

He abruptly resigned this week with a post on X saying simply that helping Reform pursue power was no longer a “good use” of his time.

Arron Banks, a Brexit-backing businessman and longtime associate of Farage, told the Financial Times that Yusuf was a “workaholic and a control freak”, qualities that Banks said had dented his popularity across the party.

“Champagne corks will be flying in HQ,” said Banks, who stood unsuccessfully for Reform for the West England mayoralty last month. Yusuf was “driven but he wasn’t very user-friendly”.

Yusuf’s exit came after he publicly criticised Reform’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, for asking a “dumb” question in the House of Commons about banning burkas, a form of full-body veil worn by some Muslim women.

With the former chair, who is of Muslim heritage, now gone, some in the rightwing populist movement spy an opportunity to ensure Reform spends more time whipping up controversy on social issues.

The schism at the very top of the party — just a few months after the public battle to oust former Reform MP Rupert Lowe — is a sign of the instability among Farage’s top team.

Reform has just five MPs and only a few dozen staff working out of its headquarters in London. It is still cobbling together the infrastructure and employees necessary to staff the 10 local authorities it seized at local elections in England last month.

One senior Reform figure said Yusuf had “alienated every single person in the party” by attempting to exert control over all of their activities. The person added that Yusuf had threatened to fire one employee if they spoke to Farage without asking his permission first.

Tensions between Yusuf — a former Goldman Sachs banker and entrepreneur — and party treasurer Nick Candy had been rumbling for some time, according to people briefed on the matter.

Party officials and political analysts believe Yusuf’s departure is unlikely to make a major dent in Reform or Farage’s popularity, which seems to reliably bounce back from scandals.

Reform’s popularity has been driven in large part by anger and antipathy towards the ruling Labour party and the main opposition Conservatives, as well as growing public frustration about stagnating living standards and high levels of immigration.

A friend of Yusuf’s said the schism was caused in large part by the culture clash between the chair’s corporate mindset and the rest of the party. 

“He came in and he wanted structure, he wanted people taking ownership and responsibility for roles and he didn’t feel that was happening,” they said. “And then people were really horrible to him online.”

At 38, he was also one of the only young public-facing figures in the party, and the only one who was not white — a significant loss at a time when Reform is trying to attract a younger and more diverse voter base.

There were early signs that he had been unhappy. On Tuesday, he refused a request from colleagues to do media appearances at the weekend after he had been announced as head of the Reform’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, an imitation of Elon Musk’s attack on the US federal bureaucracy but, for local authorities in England.

Banks will now take the reins at the Doge unit, claiming he was better placed for the role than Yusuf as he had a “broader depth of business experience”.

By coincidence, Yusuf’s departure came on the same day a vicious spat erupted between US President Donald Trump and Musk — a bromance that helped bring America’s populist government to power.

Little has been able to slow Reform’s momentum in British politics. “The media is constantly looking for signs of the end of these movements but I suspect it’s only the beginning,” said one of the party’s biggest recent donors. “The only thing that would do for Reform is something terrible on Farage. It’s still all about him.”